Nanny, Pappy, Mammy
by Virodeil
Summary: The construction workers find a mysterious package when reconstructing Tony's penthouse post-Battle of New York. Nobody wishes to claim "ownership" of the package for the right reason, not even its supposed "owner," so Tony is forced to do it himself. And then, the real "owner" comes along, and they become… a pre-made family?
1. The Mysterious Package

Nanny, Pappy, Mammy  
By Rey

**The construction workers find a mysterious package when reconstructing Tony's penthouse post-Battle of New York. Nobody wishes to claim "ownership" of the package **_**for the right reason**_**, not even its supposed "owner," so Tony is forced to do it himself. And then, the **_**real**_** "owner" comes along, and they become… a pre-made family?**

Chapter 1: The Mysterious Package

The lab is practically unchanged, three days past the alien invasion that racked New York in the space of hours. Tony revels in it, in the _safe_ familiarity that he usually tried to change: His bots are puttering in the background, JARVIS is assisting him in his existing projects, and evidence of such projects are strewn on every surface imaginable.

Well, there are _some_ changes. One of his workbenches, for example, is filled to the brim with completed body detectors, one of his new creations, for the purpose of digging living _and dead_ people out of collapsed buildings. But he chooses not to dwell on this topic or even look at the things once they are finished, and someone from SI's R&D is going to come for them soon, so changes like this are more or less negligible.

And, for once in many years, Tony is _not at all_ curious of what _else_ have been changed.

He hasn't slept a wink these past three days for this very reason, just like he has never pondered on what-ifs, the purposes of his new gadgets, and where his supposed teammates are.

For once, he wants it safe, and he will do _everything_ to get it.

The evening is warm, and busy as ever in such a sleepless city, even three days past a disaster. Tony huffs, as he – still in his dingy, smelly, comfy lab clothes – is towed along by an exasperated and concerned Pepper across an outdoor eating area. It belongs to one of the restaurants, cafés, shops and bakeries that populate Stark Tower's first and second floors, and Pepper has chosen it as the place where he is going to get his sustenance _at last_.

His attention skips everywhere: from the few people out and about here on the ground zero of the disaster, to the empty places where the paving is cracked or scorched or spilt on by something dark, to the air of shock and trauma and numb disbelief that _still_ taints everything. He doesn't know what Pepper orders for him. He just eats, and drinks, and grunts an affirmation or shakes his head to whatever she says or asks.

And then someone comes up and addresses the awkward table, just as awkwardly: "Erh, sorry, boss, I mean, Mister Stark, Miss Potts, Erh, a package, we found a package, a box really, me and my buddies, in the penthouse, in the big hole there. There's no address. Erh, no way to open it, too – but we didn't try to open it I swear! There's just… nothing. It's pretty cold, though, and pretty heavy, like a freezer inside-out really, that cold, erh, sorry, so can I please put it on the table? Please?"

Tony looks blankly at the newcomer for a long, long while. The said newcomer – blessedly – doesn't say anything else, just fidgeting in place in his grubby khaki coverall, smelling of dust and sweat and construction-related chemical agents. And then the info about "a box in the big hole in the penthouse" filters in, and, nearly at the same time, Tony notices the big wooden thing held with much reluctance in the arms of the… construction worker?

"Huh," he mutters. Because the box doesn't look cold at all, even in his exhausted, sleep-deprived perception, although it does look heavy… and luxurious. It is made up of smooth, high-quality panels of dark wood hemmed with bands of gold inlit with little gems, polished so much that they reflect the lights, shadows, sillhouettes and even images nearby, like unconvensional mirrors. There are a pair of strong-but-slim wrought-iron handles set at either side of the box, polished just as glowingly, clutched in the gloved hands of the nervous whoever-he-is.

And indeed, from visual observation alone, Tony _can't_ find any opening on it. It is like the replica of a treasure chest, like Pepper is commenting to the construction worker while waving the latter to put the box on the table.

But it also looks like the small version of a luxurious coffin, nailed shut and neatly. `_Like Mom's and Dad's coffins._`

Tony has to swallow bile on that thought. The remaining food on his side of the table – whatever it is – feels even more unappetising than before, now.

The nausea doesn't abate when he – at long last – sets his bare hands on the surface of the not-coffin. It _increases_, instead, as he does feel the _freezing chill_ emanating from inside, as if the box were some shaped and coloured piece of solid, unmelting ice, not something that was once part of a tree. `_Where does the condensation go? Has there even been any condensation to begin with? There's no condensation mark on the wood. Mom certainly harped about it enough times when I didn't use a coaster for my drinks on her precious wooden furniture. The weather's warm enough. There should be lots of condensation by now. But if there's no condensation…._`

The scraping of his chair on the pavement bricks sounds like thunder in his ears, competing with his suddenly loud, loud heartbeats. `_If there's no condensation, it means some mumbo-jumbo is in play here. And if some mumbo-jumbo is in play, it means __**aliens**__ have invaded __**my**__ home __**again**__._`

Tony doesn't know when he moved, or if he moved at all on his own. But here he is, standing in his half-renovated penthouse, staring at the big patch of wet concrete cement that has replaced the crater Hulk made with Loki's body three days ago.

There is nothing special on the new concrete stuffing the crater. There is nothing special either in the whole open-plan floor, he finds, when he at last tears his gaze away from the former crater. A half-confused, half-frustrated noise vibrates his throat.

"J?" he croaks out at length, after _re_-scrutinising the still-half-wrecked surroundings – the only sign in the whole tower, bar the roof from which Loki launched the Tessaract-powered portal, that the alien invasion has ever happened.

"J?" he repeats, his mind scrambled and scrambling. – He so _hates_ being here: near the window where Loki launched him _out_, no doubt with the intention to pancake him far down below, and near the roof where the portal almost shut his – _briefly dead_ – body out in the-middle-of-nowhere space.

But JARVIS _doesn't answer_, and panic begins to set in in earnest. "J? Don't play coy with me! Where are you?!"

A pair of arms close round him from behind. But they don't belong to any of the Iron Man suits he stored in a corner of his lab space, piloted by his currently mute AI. No, they belong to a woman, and his ears get the confirmation a second after.

"Tony, please, calm down. There's nothing to be afraid of, here and now. You're safe. We're _all_ safe, thanks to you."

Pepper. Soft-voiced. As if Tony could be blown away or broken into pieces if she spoke louder, harsher, more insistently.

But he can't blame her; no, he can't, he realises, as he is gradually aware of his own body traitorously trembling against her soft curves.

The ruse is up.

He has been avoiding sleep to avoid the nightmares, but the nightmares have caught up to him instead in the waking world, and now _somebody else_ knows that he is broken, in all the senses that he can think of. `_I told her I'm all right. I told __**them**__ I'm all right. What's she gonna tell them, now? What's she gonna do 'for my own good' now? Shrink-time? Madhouse-time? Off-SI-forever-time? What's gonna happen with the bots, then? Will I still have ownership of my own chest's arc reactor,even? Will they take that away too, since I'm 'mentally unsound'?_`

His breath hitches. His chest burns with phantom fire, with phantom chill.

And there is _something else_ chilly, recently….

"The box?"

Pepper shakes her head. Her hair brushes against the nape of his neck, as she manoeuvres her way to stand in front of him at the same time, without letting go of her hold on him. "It's safe, too," she says. I've asked Mister Barton to call SHIELD to take it away. It's with Harry now, and Mister Rogers. We decided to just let it be where Mister Brennan left it. Bringing it into the tower proper didn't seem prudent, especially after you had such a reaction to it. We've evacuated the area, just in case. It'll be swept through once more after the box is gone, to make sure things are really fine."

Her words wash past Tony comfortingly. And yet, something seems to niggle at his mind and his heart, leaving a rising curiosity and desire in its wake.

"No," he manages to say, after a few false starts ending with gulps of air. "Don't. Not yet. I… I want to study it. In my lab. Please send it to my lab."

"Are you sure, Tony?" Pepper squeezes him gently in a familiar hug.

The chuckle that answers her is brittle, bitter and hollow, but genuine. No more pretending. No more avoiding. "No, I'm not," he admits. "But I'm sure I'll regret it if I don't grab the chance."

Tony didn't expect that his lab would be empty of humans while the box got deposited there. But, for once, luck – or maybe Pepper's understanding and anticipation of his desires, left from PA-dom – leaves him alone with it, discounting the ever-present bots.

Well, and discounting the ever-present JARVIS, too, who turns out to have been silent because _he didn't know what to say in the face of conflicting thoughts, calculations, __**emotions**__ and data_.

And now, the AI, like a schoolboy eager to correct his mistakes in a redo of math test, attentively displays _lots_ of data across the screens. Data from the scans he had conducted on his own volition before Tony arrived in the lab.

Data which shows that, inside the _airtight, below-zero-degree-Celsius_ wooden box, lies a _living, breathing, unconscious/sleeping __**alien infant-sized being**_. And this zombi, frozen-treat "infant" has been deposited _hours ago_ on the crater, when it was still a crater with the skeleton of the patch just laid in, through a burst of _alien_ energy radiation that came out of nowhere.

Tony's hair stands on end. `_It's so easy for aliens to invade my place. I doubt even Fort nox has a workable defence against it. But earth __**isn't**__ their playground! And what about sending this little thing to me? If they meant it to harm me, why hasn't it woken up and attacked yet? Is it trying to lure me into a false sense of security? But I'm not on guard now and we're not even talking about it aloud! How long can it stay in there without air, anyway? Is it some kind of suspended animation? How if it's a __**real baby**__, not a pint-sized adult? Is somebody __**abandoning**__ a child __**here**__? What for? I'm not a nanny! Not a social worker either, or a foster dad, or even a dad, fullstop. How can I take care of a child? Where can I get somebody to take care of an __**alien**__ child? And… SHIELD…!_`

"**Dont allow anybody from shield to enter the tower. Lock all access to this floor including the vents until I tell you to open,**" he types on his customary – but rarely used – keyboard, hurriedly. "**Find a way to open the box. I want to know if its a kid or not.**"

Pneumatic and hydraulic hisses answer him, soon followed by busily ringing phones. Then words scroll across the screen that is positioned right before him, reading, "**I have found no way to open the box without damaging it and possibly the being inside, Sir. The being has not shown any sign of stirring, waking up or weakening, so we may have time to try other methods in this regard. However, SHIELD's containment unit is here presently, and I believe both Ms. Potts and Mr. Banner are trying to contact you through your private channel and the lab's. Shall I answer them for you? If so, what should I say, Sir?**"

Tony purses his lips, frowns, types a word or three before deleting them just as quickly, and then decides to go with his gut instinct, anyway, just like in other situations where science stumps him. "**Tell them im changing my mind and investigating this alone for now. Tell peps not to worry. Im safe. Im better than before in fact. Tell her ill tell her later. Tell bruce thank you.**" His heart beats seemingly throughout his whole body, all the while, making it thrum with adrenaline as if he were on too much strong coffee. But indeed, he knows full well that he is without human support from now on, until he decides to get help.

And Anthony Edward Stark _rarely_ asks for help.

While he really, really _doesn't know_ – can't even _predict_ – what may happen in the next moment, the moment when all ties have been cut and he is truly on his own. Whether a Trojan-Horse-style alien attack or an unwanted babysitting duty, he is really, really unprepared for it.

But he also can't risk the intruder being a real baby, even if it is an alien baby, and a shady, heavy-handed spy agency like SHIELD getting a hold on it.

Well, the sooner the better for cases like this, right? Ripping the bandaid in one go, as it were.

He peeks through the corner of his eye at the polished, tasteful-seeming thing sitting nearby to his left. `_I was right. Pepper was wrong. That box is more like a coffin than a treasure chest._`

Then, `_If it's more like a nailed-shut coffin, maybe the gems are the 'nails'? Some of them? Or all of them? They should be blasted by a tiny, high-calibre laser gun, then? Maybe clockwise one by one? Or anti-clockwise? Or should they be blasted on one go to prevent any secondary defence mechanism setting in?_`

He opts for the best, safest option.

He lines up all the bots and gets them to aim all the high-calibre but tiny laser guns he has at each a gem. Then he gets JARVIS to take over the count-down and execution of the shot.

The soft, nearly unnoticeable white glow of the lines of little gems doesn't flare out, shatter or do anything else noticeable as the thin, concentrated laser beams strike them in unison. The gems simply _vanish_, and the gold bands with them.

And, without the bands, the panels fall apart, clattering onto the metal surface of the workbench, like the unglued elementary-school cardboard model of an elongated cube.

Unlike the model, though, there is no empty air inside, nor the diagonal ribs that would help elementary-school children learn geometry.

There is instead a bunch of unmelting, soft powdery snow, bounded in a tiny tub carved off of a block of solid, deep-freeze ice, _with a small, thin but baby-like blue face barely peeking out of it_ – decorated with a pair of half-open, unfocused, glowing, tiny red eyes beneath a pair of slight ridges in place of eyebrows, an equally tiny nose, a slightly open tiny mouth rimmed in darker blue lips, a pair of barely-there, conically upright ears, and a few tiny lines on the brow and cheeks that seem to be birthmarks instead of scars.

Tony stares at the little face, at the little eyes, transfixed.

Somehow, he doubts that this is an adult with dwarfism syndrome. The youngest-looking recorded of such adult is a three-year-old-look-alike, as far as he knows, and this one is _not_.

From the length alone, and the face peeking out of the snow, this one looks like a _prematurely born baby_, like some babies he saw in the NICU in one of his SI CSR visits.

In fact, since this is an alien specimen, the tubful of snow and ice might even serve as its NICU pod.

On that thought, his heart thumps harder, faster, and his chest constricts. `_I can barely take care of __**myself**__. How can I take care of a __**premature alien baby**__? What does this one need? How if I accidentally kill it? Will SHIELD take care of it?_`

His hands clench into fists. `_No. Not a chance. SHIELD is a damn ruthless spy agency, not a children's hospital. They'll just __**experiment**__ on it. No, no, __**no**__. I'm not a good person, but I'm not __**that**__ bad. But __**how**__ can I take care of it? I know nothing about it! I'll be just as bad if I accidentally kill it!_` He shudders, but not with the chill emanating from the small tub before him. Images of gruesome endings for the baby parade before his mind, obscuring the real sight of the thin, little face.

The more terrible the imaginings are, the more desperate he is. And then, at the end of his wit, he grumbles, `_Is there a manual for this? Or can I hire someone and bind them tight with NDAs to take care of the baby? Preferably with the manual included?_` So he types to JARVIS, "**Search anybody with babys features. This baby. Search for someone who can take care of them too. Experienced. Good with kids. Discreet. No close friends or family to speak of. No blabbermouth. Ask happy to help you if you cant find them yourself. Need them asap. Find me things I can do to take care of the baby till then. Hopefully the kid doesn't wake up till then.**"

Shortly, he is engrossed in skimming article after article about how to take care of a baby, a premature baby, even twin babies. JARVIS got him some handbooks about caring for babies in a NICU, also research articles and textbooks about the body and development of a baby. At one point, he even has one of his Iron Helpers move the tubful of alien baby to the side, so that he has more room for his holograms.

Well, that last action is what actually gives him some clue about the identity of the alien baby. JARVIS informs him that there is a piece of sheety something that may be a letter on what was the bottom of the chest, previously tucked under the tub. The scanning done by the Iron Helper who moved the tub shows that there is nothing apparently odd or harmful on the golden thing, so Tony plucks it off the wooden panel it rests on.

The envelope feels oddly tensile and flapped in a vaguely triangular shape at one side, sealed with a line of wax that culminates with a coloured blob on the top of the triangle. Tony has the signet closely photographed before he teases it off.

Some of the edge is broken off and the signet is slightly cracked, but Tony's attention is no longer on the emblem, anyhow.

There is a burst of energy that quickly dissipates, like when the box was techily pried opened, and JARVIS _still_ cannot track where the energy goes. And the letter inside, written on a thick, smooth paper with dark reddish golden ink that glows ever so slightly…

"**To whom it may concern,  
Please receive this child, whom we call Loki since we added them into our family, into your own for the duration of one hundred years. We hope that, by experiencing life among Midgardians, they will come to know the error of their ways and that we love them sorely. We shall reimburse you richly for the care.  
Our gratitude to you, always, until Loki is returned to us and beyond,  
Loki's adoptive parents.**"

…Is a bullshit to the fullest. And the poor baby is apparently named _Loki_.

Loki, who needs to learn "the error of their ways," forget the "love" part.

The same Loki who wreaked havoc in New York and Stuttgart…?

But _that_ Loki has been sent back to Asgard _yesterday_!

`_I put a forty-eight-hour bender to make that Tessaract devise for __**nothing**__?! And now they're sicking the one who __**hijacked my tower**__ and __**tried to kick me off from the fucking hundredth floor without a suit**__ on __**me**__?!_`

Chill that has nothing to do with neither the lab's temperature nor the nearby ice tub suffuses Tony's marrows.

`_If it's __**that**__ Loki…. But if it is? What will I do? What __**can**__ I do? Damn Asgard! Earth is __**not**__ a penal planet! And what's with just dumping exiled people here without even some intergalactic agreement or something? We aren't a planet of savages, for the most part! What's with considering 'mortals' weak and uncivilised and to be ruled __**by them**__?_`

The internal ranting is cut short when the Iron Helper nudges at his back and presents a Starkpad to him, on which interface is simply scrolled, "**What would you like to do with the baby, Sir?**"

Tony swallows, looks over at the tubful of sleeping probable villain who looks _far different, far more innocent_ from the Loki that he briefly knew for a long, long while, then finally writes, "**We build a freezer room for this one,**" below the question.

Problems immediately crop up on the realisation of that idea, all the same, such as:  
• How cold will the freezer be?  
• Does the baby need circulated oxygen or other gas(es)? In what measure?  
• Does the baby need certain air pressure or gravitation?  
• Does the baby _always_ need the freezer? Can a cooling jacket suffice? And  
• Can the baby do well, trapped in yet another box with neither company nor socialisation?

Well, but the baby seems fine with earth-style air, pressure and gravitation. With the tub and the snow, too. So, maybe….

`_Why am I putting myself out so much for __**Loki**__, anyhow?_` he scowls, jerking his train of thoughts back to what his logical mind deems fit and proper, namely _nothing_ about Loki. `_Better wait what he'll do when he's awake, I'd say. And, on that note, I really can't wait forever till he wakes up. Now where did I store that electric pen? If it could get an ow from Brucey, it can get this lazeabout into the right frame of mind._`

But that little face is so peaceful… and the little thumb sucked by that little mouth is so babyish… and what can a little baby do to a grown-up Anthony Edward Stark backed by a labful of deadly tech?

`_Oh. Damn. He __**wins**__._`


	2. The Hunt for a Babysitter

Nanny, Pappy, Mammy  
By Rey

Chapter 2: The Hunt for a Babysitter

"**Ms. Potts has been asking after you for the past two hours, Sir,**" JARVIS nudges, after… well, a while.

Tony shrugs. "**Shes alone.**"

"**Ms. Potts is with Ms. Romanova, Mr. Barton, Mr. Banner, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Rhodes and a guest by the name of Mr. Wilson, Sir.**"

`_Well, the whole gang, then. But… Rhody? What's he doing here? Only __**now**__? Why not __**before**__ – when we sorely needed extra hand against the Chitauri? And what's with a __**guest**__ here just three days after a __**huge battle**__?_`

"**What does she want,**" he pecks rapidly at the keyboard with the fingers of one hand, while the other is still busy with the holographic interior diagram of the freezer-crib.

"**She wants to speak with you and see you with her own eyes, Sir. Her words, not mine.**"

Tony lets out a small snort, his first noise since… well, some time ago. "**Tell her im busy but all right. Ill see her when I see her. Send away the rest too. Im receiving no guest at this time.**" Then, remembering what he tasked the AI to do, "**Did you get the thing I want you to search.**"

"**I found little regarding any being with blue skin and red eyes, Sir, and none that would match our young guest with acceptable accuracy. The mentions that I have managed to find are mostly in the realm of fiction of various genres and media. There is no unifying theme across the findings, moreover.**" The words feel… regretful, if typed words could do that. And, "**I have not managed to find a nurse, doctor or home assistant that would match your criteria, either, Sir, and Mr. Hogan is still searching. Should I ask for SHIELD's assistance?**"

Tonys heart leaps, before squeezing tight. Letting go of the hologram, he types, "**NO!**" most emphatically. "**ILL REALLY GIVE YOU TO A COMMUNITY COLLEGE IF YOU TELL SHIELD!**"

"**It was only a suggestion, Sir,** JARVIS' words feel… wounded; again, without the sounds that usually deliver the feeling.

Still, Tony huffs. "**Be smarter j. I created you better. What would shield do with a BABY? And im not about to let them have full custody but I bet they want to have it.**"

"**I would suggest that you search for assistance among the regular staff of stark Tower, then, Sir,**" JARVIS feels rather snippy now.

Well, Tony can be just as snippy. "**do it.**"

And then he goes back to his diagram.

The lag between his command and the realisation on the hologram, although barely perceptible, tells him eloquently of how… disagreeable… his AI is feeling.

`_Oh. Great. A baby, and now a sulky __**teenager**__._`

"Mister Stark…," Pepper sighs.

"Miss Potts…," Tony mimics her.

She glares through the screen of the Starkpad that the frazzled but victorious genius inventor is holding. She holds the expression for a long, long moment, in fact, while Tony paces back and forth just outside of the plexiglass doors that separate the lab area with the bank of lifts, equally silent.

Well, the silence is actually what makes her cave in, in the end, he thinks, since she asks about his _health_ – mental health, specifically, through offering herself as company – instead of ranting about him shirking his duties.

But Tony feels good. He feels even _better_ than three days ago, somehow, now that he has finished the mini freezer-crib for the baby, and a cooling onesie, and a portable snow-maker….

`_But she doesn't know, does she? How long did I keep the communication ban up? How can I tell her about the baby without SHIELD shouldering and kicking their way in? What will she think about the baby? Hell, I don't even know what to think about the baby, myself!_`

So, picking the – _hopefully_ – safest, neutralest way, he asks for food instead. And he is indeed famished!

On the topic of food, though…. `_Uh-oh…. What do I feed the baby? What's safe? Can they eat human baby food? How old are they, anyway? The letter didn't say anything!_`

"**Search for milk OR ANY OTHER LIQUID that you think everyone can drink INCLUDING ALIEN BABIES,**" he sends to JARVIS as soon as Pepper signs off. "**Prep the medical wing. We need to do some tests on the baby. Need more data to prepare safe meals.**"

`_So small in body; so large in problems…,_` he grouses, meanwhile. `_I really, really, really, really, really wish there's a manual for this! Why didn't those irresponsible bullshit adoptive parents send along a manual, instead of just a bullshit letter? Better yet, why did they take in a kid if they thought they couldn't handle a kid? It's another thing entirely if you're biologically saddled with a kid like Howard and Maria with me! Though I suppose they could've used condoms to prevent me from ever popping up, huh? Better for me!_`

He halts at the sliding glass doors leading back to the lab, with his eyes trained morosely – and, he has to admit, a little sleepily – on the tubful of snowed-in blue baby still parked on one of his sturdy workshop benches. "What am I gonna do with you?" he bursts out, at last, after so long keeping his silence.

And, hearing his voice, the first ever noise to break the silence of the lab since the coffin-like box has been pried open, the baby's glowing red eyes pop open wide.

"Oh, _damn_."

Tony stares at the baby.

The baby stares at Tony.

The staring contest lasts for a long, long, long while, Tony feels. In that long while, he manages to examine those glowing red eyes in detail, and finds that:  
a) the eyes seem to be pupilless, hence sensitive to light;  
b) the glow seems to be like a cat's, hence night vision;  
c) for a premature-looking baby, the said baby seems to take in everything just fine, like an adult;  
d) the baby holds the unblinking stare comfily, as if there were a secondary lid that protect the eyes; and  
e) the confusion and wariness in those eyes are more apt for an _adult_ than a _child_, let alone a _baby_.

The last point is what actually ends the contest.

"J, gi'm my gauntlet." Tony says in his calmest, levelest voice while stubbornly keeping his own unblinking gaze on the not-so-babyish baby.

And, _in response_, the baby's eyes widen even more, however impossible it sounds. And those eyes look away _towards Tony's still-bare hands_. With the kind of alarmed-but-resigned look that an _adult_ – an _experienced_ adult, helpless but knowing, _anticipating_ – would sport on such proclamation from their hostile interloqutor.

`_Bingo._`

The vindication bears no satisfaction, though; _not at all_. `_An adult trapped in a baby's body? How cruel. Even if it's __**Loki**__. This is just torture for the sake of torture!_`

This makes the bit about "learning" in that letter a _little_ more sensical… kind of… in the practical front… but _still_!

`_How can __**anybody**__ learn that their parents love them if the parents aren't present? How can __**any**__ would-be caretaker care for them if the caretaker knows that they're actually an adult?_`

Tony has to swallow back bile when, on raising one _inactive_ gauntlet towards the baby, without even wearing it, the said baby tries to escape the tubful of snow _without any avail_.

He loses his fight against the escapist bile when he sees how _terrified_ and _desperate_ the baby is, even as they struggle to move, struggle to breathe, struggle to scream – for help, for mercy, in fear, or something else.

Loki or not, adult or not, the fact remains that before him lies a thin, tiny, feeble baby. And seeing a helpless little thing trying to flee from eminent death while trapped in a tiny space with _him_ as the bringer of death….

Once, in his far premature days of senior high school, his class was exposed to a short propaganda film about how evil pregnancy abortion is. In one segment of the film, there was a moving illustration of a mostly-formed if small human fetus futilely trying to flee from a pair of scissors that was to end its life, while still being confined in the womb.

Once, he scoffed at the clear propagandaness of the short film, at the impossibility of such a crude method of abortion being ever used, at the ludicrousness of entertaining the idea that a not-yet-well-formed thing could acquire any level of awareness or even a semblance of _sentience_, and at the handful of schoolgirls who were moved – even to tears – by it.

Once.

Tony doesn't leave the loo until JARVIS nudges him _again_, telling him that Pepper's food order for him has arrived, and it consists of Japanese light seafood dishes. It feels both like a moment and an age, sequestered before the sink, looking at his own noxious vomit pooling on its bottom. Focusing on it, trying mightily to forget the memory of the scissors and the fetus and the helpless inevitability of it all from decades ago, and also the shadow of that tableau in _his_ gauntlet held by _his_ hand towards the adult-in-baby from quite recently.

He doesn't immediately return to the lab, either, to where the food has been deposited by one of his Iron Helpers, to where the baby _is still there_. No, he goes to his floor, takes a thorough bath, cleans his teeth fastidiously, chooses his attire carefully – simple, comfortable, casual, boring, clean, tidy, somehow – and inspects JARVIS' report about the candidates for the baby's caretaker among his staff while lying down on his bed.

_And then_, he asks JARVIS to prepare individual interviews with the eight candidates that the AI butler has gathered for him among all the people – not even just _his_ people, as he asked for – in the tower.

"Sir, the baby…," JARVIS tries to interject.

"Any concerning behaviour?" Tony interjects back, hating how sort-of-wavering his raspy voice is presently.

He dismisses the concern when JARVIS reluctantly denies its presence.

No, he is not ready to return to the lab yet.

He wonders if he is ever ready, as long as the adult-in-baby is still there.

As long as his damned gauntlet is still there.

Sequestered in a small but well-defended – from spies, eavesdroppers and physical attacks – room on the ground floor, Tony flicks his way up and down the list of interview questions that JARVIS has proposed, sent to his Starkpad. He requested it on the way down to this level, frantically, when he realised that he _really, really, really_ has no clue about what even a human baby will need, let alone an alien one, or an adult forced into a baby's body, beyond the _very, very, very_ general notion of "safe and genuine and close enough." – He read all those materials about baby development and interactions. He has the secrecy part down pat. But _implementing_ his knowledge into succinct and probing interview questions…? "Huh."

Worse yet, JARVIS' suggestions – such as "Do you like babies?" or "Do you interact with infants often?" or "If you were unemployed, and offered a job as a baby-sitter or a caretaker in a daycare for infants, would you accept it? Why?" – entail answers that can either take a long time to satisfy his criteria or digress all too easily into so many different things. He might spend _eight days_ on this, one for each candidate, and he suspects he doesn't even have _one day_ in truth… or even an hour, if SHIELD decides to be much more proactive _and intrusive_.

And, to come here, he crossed the lobby of the tower. Deserted as it looked, it's still not a guarantee that it's free of peeping-toms.

Peeping-toms who could inform other nosies, who could plan and mount an ambush aimed at him _and the baby_ even now.

"Damn."

Once more, he looks over each profile of the eight candidates, trying to spot something – _anything_ – that may hint at a strong, capable, experienced person with unshakable integrity who can _and want to_ take care of an adult in a baby's body for… how much time? Certainly not _a century_?

`_I won't even live half that long! Then what? Do I pawn the baby to somebody else in a will like some inherited baggage? Does that poor caretaking inheriter even want to shoulder this stupid, irreasonable responsibility for __**half a century**__? What if they dump the baby in a random orphanage somewhere? Will the baby even still be a baby by the time I croak? What if they're a comparably two-year-old hellion by then? What if today's baby-sitter is fed up on the first day? How many interviews like this must I give in my lifetime alone? What about the security concerns for both me and the baby? I was never babysat by the same nanny twice in two years when I was tiny-me…._`

He buries his face in his hands, propped on the desktop before him by his elbows.

"Damn you, whoever and wherever you are, Loki's adoptive parents."

At length, Tony ends up with four candidates whom he approves of equally, from profile alone… well, _and_ a hasty brainstorming session with JARVIS:  
• Natali Salu from Maria Stark Foundation, Children's Home division, orphan since birth and self-appointed field operative in rescuing unwanted children from bad homes or the streets;  
• Cintosha Chandra Avandia, otherwise Chan-Chan, R&D and household all-purpose assistant, Pepper's "internal affairs" counterpart, Indonesian immigrant, adoptive mum of seven-year-old twins;  
• Cathleen Ruth Livingston, otherwise "Katie," Stark Tower's Starbucks most unflappable, most patient, most genuinely Tony-disinterested employee, who _chose_ to stay during the battle because "even heroes need some coffee;" and  
• Dr. Tioma, Doctors Without Borders current resident staff at Stark Tower, experienced in various places and situations, as unflappable as Katie but in a different way, frankly rather alien-seeming with the androgyny and neutral pronoun and single name.

And now, the field test.

"You Natali Salu?"

"Yes, Mister Stark."

"What do you think of a baby dropped on someone's doorstep?"

"Well, is the baby dead or sick or injured, sir?"

"No."

"Well, then I hope the owner of the house can and will take care of them, or give them to a reputable home."

"If the baby's dropped on _your_ doorstep, what'd you do?"

"Depends, sir. Most likely I'll put' them with the others at the Maria Stark Home, so I can still drop by from time to time to see them and do my duties."

"So you've got no desire to be a long-time babysitter? Or even a mom?"

"Well, frankly no, sir. I don't know if I'll be able to be a good mother, and I like travelling, and making visible impacts. Trying to save as many as I can, too…."

"On a different note… what do you think if you see a baby with blue skin and red eyes? – No I mean not a sick baby, but a baby with literal blue skin and red eyes."

"Well, babies are babies, Mister Stark. Even a baby monster is a baby. And I don't mean blue skin and red eyes are signs of a monster. Just saying. I guess it depends on if the baby is harmful even as a baby. Harmful by nature, I mean. If not then why not?"

"Harmful as in?"

"Well, I guess, killing, paralising, injuring, crippling in any way, or in any length of time, that sort of thing, sir."

"And if the baby's that sort of baby?"

"I'd try to find why, if maybe the baby felt threatened, if maybe they could calm down, or be neutralised in not a bad way. I'd really hate to kill them…. It's not their fault to be lethal. If they know better, that's another problem."

"And if the baby used to be a grown-up? With memories intact?"

"I'd wonder what a sick experiment that poor thing had to experience beforehand and most likely try to hunt down the perpetrator, or at least let the authorities know."

"If you're to _interact_ with such baby some time, and the baby isn't homicidal, would you?"

"Well, why not?"

"Without blabbing to anybody?"

"Of course."

"All right. Thank you for sharing your perception and opinions with me. If I got more questions can I call you?"

"Of course."

"Don't blab about this to anybody, okay? I'm holding you to it. In fact, please sign this so it's all legal."

"Yes, sir."

"Now, any advice for dealing with such a baby?"

"Treat them as both a baby and an adult? – I mean, Mister Stark, they got baby needs, but you can talk to them like an adult, I suppose."

"I notice you haven't asked if the baby's hypothetical or not…."

"You haven't indicated that they're hypothetical, sir."

"Huh…."

"I was in Puente Antiguo, last year, Mister Stark. Never went to a desert. Wanted to know what a settlement beside or in the desert is like, without going to high-end places like Vegas. Heard stories there. Human-like aliens having a spat with each other. That place was a wreck, a month after, when I came. Not quite like this, but close enough. And nobody was interested in it…. I came back with a couple of kids. Their parents died shielding them from pieces of their own homes. The alien spat ruined them. I doubt the town is back to normal yet. The kids aren't back to normal yet, in any case. They _absolutely_ refuse to live in anything other than a tent in a big field."

"Huh…."

"Well… since we're talking about this… well, sorry, sir, but would you like to help those kids? Heard you're an engineer. Could you maybe convince them to live in a more sheltered area? Like, maybe, if they know there's a strong, anti-earthquake building and the new home's one of those?"

"Huh…."

Tony scratches the side of his head. The interview is getting prolonged and derailed. But the topic…. `_Can I…?_`

"**J note it down for later when the babys situation is wrapped up,**" he types on his Starkpad, at the end. Then, addressing the dark-skinned, wavy-haired, practical-looking middle-aged woman seated across from him, he says, "Done, Miss Salu. Thank you. Glad to work with you in this case. Please keep your phone close and expect at least messages – if not calls – in probably odd hours. We'll settle the compensation after this. Remember, don't blab to anybody, including your fellow interviewees. And please call Miss Livingston in on your way out."

One down. Three more to go….

Sadly, Cathleen "Katie" Ruth Livingstone, the bukesome, patient, Tony-disinterested Stark Tower's Starbucks café employee, turns out not as unflappable as usual.

But then, he imagines, if Pepper died during the invasion, he wouldn't be unflappable, either. And Katie's girlfriend _of ten years_ died that time, a few blocks away, trapped in the rubble of her workplace as head of the cleaning crew of an office building.

In fact, Katie came not for the interview, but to thank him for making and distributing the tool that could detect bodies – not just living bodies – which enabled her to bury her girlfriend Dea. She says so, firstly projecting stoicism with visible effort, then quickly downgrading into a blubbering mess.

No, he can't heap the baby on her when she's like this.

Still, "What do you think of alien babies?"

A wet chuckle is the only answer, for a long while. Then, "If I hate them? No, unless they've got an active hand in this. But I doubt it. Babies are innocent for a reason."

"And if one of the perpetrators is turned into a baby?"

"I'd say it's punishment enough, as long as the baby can't do or say anything. Let it be helpless, like we were helpless. Like Dea was helpless…."

`_Oh._`

Two down. Two more to go….

"Chan-Chan… what do you think of adding a baby to your horde?"

"Parents?"

"None. Not me, either."

"How old?"

"Dunno. Tiny."

"Caretaker?"

"You, I hope."

"The twins need attention, Mister Stark. Not easy, to make them behave, far away from your things. I can try, but baby need much attention, too. Not fair for the baby. Maybe give the baby caretaker, then I visit the baby some time? To check the baby and the caretaker?"

Tony sighs and props his chin up with the ball of his hands, silently regarding the short, chocolate-skinned, curly-haired, bottle-bottom-spectacled, leg-braced young woman across from him for a long, long while. Cintosha Chandra "Chan-Chan" Avandia stares back, equally silent.

"The baby needs a constant," he bursts out at last, remembering his horrible childhood. "Can't you… do something? I don't know if the last candidate will accept this job or not. They're a doctor. – Don't you like babies? You can just work with the baby instead of everything if you want. Well, the baby and _me_, really, but no longer quite in SI, just a nominal presence in the administration. So what about it?"

The girl looks puzzled and disturbed, though, hearing that, instead of mollified or exasperated, like in other cases. "When did you get a baby, Mister Stark?" she asks. "Nobody came in with a baby here before battle. Nobody came with a baby here after battle, too. Did you build the baby in your lab?"

And, hearing _that_, Tony's face slides into his hands, no longer just propped up by them. He feels disturbed by that thought, _himself_. "Not that!" he groans out, through the calloused appendages. "Aliens sent it, okay? Not my choice either. N'now I gotta keep it for _a hundred years_."

"I'm sorry?"

"A century! One hundred years! Ten decades!"

"Oh…."

"Just 'oh'?"

"Well… what do you want me to do, or say, Mister Stark? I don't think I will live for a century, either. Or work here."

"No no no no no no! Don't you dare resign now! I won't accept your resignation! It's bad enough that I must find a nanny for the baby right now! I need _my_ nanny, too!"

Tony is slumped dramatically over the desktop, by now, oozing down his chair, whinging into both his hands and the wooden top of the desk. He remains thus as he dismisses the young woman – "Just for now! Don't you dare run away! Don't tell anybody too!" – and asks her to call in Dr. Tioma.

With three failures thus far, all the same, he has little hope for the fourth….


	3. The Alien Everything

Nanny, Pappy, Mammy  
By Rey

Chapter 3: The Alien Everything

Tony didn't know what to think – didn't have any specific impression – about Dr. Tioma, prior to the meeting. He rarely came across the doctor in the tower's lobby, and had no reason to interact with them beyond that and the annual renewal of the nominal lease of DWB. What little he's known about the doctor prior to this point comes just from Pepper's and Happy's and Chan-Chan's and Katie's idle rumours, and also from the profile that JARVIS gathered for him quite recently. And what little he's seen indicates – no, _indicated_ – an ordinary, boring doctor in routine desk-job transit between missions.

Now that the doctor is standing at the door and Tony has time to scrutinise the latter somewhat freely, though….

His heart jolts, then _squirms_, but not at all in satisfaction, let alone pleasure. And his body responds with a – hopefully subtle – shiver.

The doctor is garbed in a boring, ordinary white doctor uniform, indeed, as per usual, with a DWB emblem on the left pocket, but the slim-fit thing – as well as the door-frame – only highlights how _tall_ they are. More than eight feet tall.

No, not just tall. _Gigantic_, rather. A slim giant, if ever there's one, with all the corresponding proportions. Wiry, humanoid, not like Hulk. Shorter than Hulk, even, but frighteningly intelligent-looking and composed, almost visibly thrumming with power that isn't just physical. Not male-looking, either, or female-looking. And the eyes…!

The eyes are far too old, for such a young face. The eyes of a seventy-year-old grizzly veteran, on a thirty-year-old prim-and-proper doctor. Deep grey-green. Lit as if from inside. _Knowing_.

Seeing that, juxtaposed with what he has known thus far, Tony blurts out, "Hell, you don't look quite like the photo-you, gramps. What changed?"

Because, like this, and ironically also _because_ of the incongruity of the ordinary uniform, Dr. Tioma looks _and feels_ very much like an _alien_. Even more than _Thor_. And Thor never hesitated from boasting how alien he is.

`_Huh. I've been making nice with and sheltering an __**unknown alien**__ in my tower for __**years**__,_` he thinks, too dazed to be properly outraged _yet_, even as his heart squirms some more, uselessly fearing for what has happened. `_It's a __**grown-up**__ alien, at that! Now what am I going to do?_`

In any case, before he can say anything more or do… whatever his scrambled brain has decided to do… the alien doctor – `_Are they really a doctor?_` – chooses to answer his retorical question. In a perfectly calm – even _blasé_ – manner. Without moving away from the door. And without shifting into a more human-like look, either. Although thankfully without any humour apparent….

"I do not yet have any grandchild to merit being called grandparent, Mister Stark. Furthermore, nothing changed in me. Only your perception of me did."

Still cultured. Still sedate. Still polite. Still terribly British upperclass-like. All, as ever. But now, Tony can hear an odd resonance in their voice. Or maybe he just never noticed it before, with how passing their acquaintanceship has been.

He frowns.

"My perception of you hasn't changed," he says, while beckoning the alien doctor in, regardless of how uneasy he feels at being in a small room with a potentially hostile extraterrestrial. "How come? We even don't see each other that often."

The alien doctor takes the seat across from him with enviable grace. "Perceptions can change because of many reasons, Mister Stark," they offer. "A different purpose aimed towards the same person is one of them. A particularly impactful experience, likewise."

"Experience like?" Tony's frown deepens, even as his heart starts to pound quicker, harsher. `_Do they know…?_`

And the alien doctor replies, in the same cultured, sedate, politely distant, soft tone, "Experience such as what happened to you while you were away to Afghanistan for three months, Mister Stark."

Tony wants to spring to his feet and hit them, very, very, very much.

"Do you know why you're here?" he grinds out instead, to avoid… complications.

Those grey-green eyes, so deep and keen and otherworldly, stares at him – _into_ him, it feels – for a long, long, long moment. And then, softer, slower, quieter than before, they pronounce, "I have been sensing the presence of a full-bodied milaða nearby, since approximately twenty-two hours ago, after a burst of… energy, of a transportation purpose. The readings on the milaða were… odd. And you might have sought a way to understand them, or what you could do about them. You might even have guessed what their nature is."

"You're so certain about it," Tony accuses, ignoring all the new questions popping up in his overactive mind. In other words, `_Did they __**arrange**__ this?_`

But the alien doctor shakes their head… maybe to both accusations, with how perceptive they seem. And, "Have you ever heard of the phrase 'educated guess', Mister Stark?" they _quip_, for once in their mutual acquaintanceship.

Tony stares, mouth agape.

"I don't know which I'd like more, laughing or hitting you," he deadpans, after an incredulous bit of silence. But the _cheeky alien_ across from him is as serene as ever.

They even direct his attention back to the reason they are there, _gently_, and _still_ as unflappably as before. As if _the alien_ were the one in control, or as if Tony were the child and that prat were the adult. "So, would you like to consult me about the milaða? And, if I might ask, who are they?"

Tony has to wrestle his caveman urge with effort, this time. Fortunately, JARVIS helps him, then, _sort of_, by pinging a message into his intranet on the Starkpad: "**The baby has been crying since you left, Sir, and nothing that we tried manages to calm them down.**"

`_Well, time's up, then. No more niceties. No more stalling._`

Haggling about the terms of the non-disclosure agreement, also the subsequent employment as doctor for and consultant about the mysterious alien baby, took a long, long, long, long time. Tony is _thoroughly_ fed up by the critical, detailed, paranoid back-and-forth, at the end, although he has been one of the participants. He is totally overwhelmed by all the unanswered, _quickly-multiplying-exponentially_ questions that he has accumulated during that torturous period, too, the latest of which are: What did they mean by swearing on their "elða"? Then again, what is "elða"? Life? Soul? Body? Mind? Self? _Magic_? Or all of those? How valid is such oath in the alien-land? Where did the doctor come from, anyway, species-wise? How did they become a _human_ doctor in the first place? Were they also a doctor in alien-land? Where is the alien-land? Can I go there? Can I document things there and bring the documentation home? Can I share the documentation with everyone? Will it hurt the doctor and the baby? Why would I care, anyway? Am I beginning to _care for them_? Did the doctor slip something into me during this highly unorthodox interview, to make me regard the two of them better? How can I battle against it, if yes?

As the result, he clams up during the short trip up the lift to his private lab.

Well, and he tries to pretend _not_ to notice how _Doctor_ Tioma positions themself one or two steps behind and slightly to his left or slightly to his right. As if a _feudal valet_, or a _security retainer_, instead of a doctor. `_If I were royalty, I'd even peg them as a __**royal guard**__._`

Highly incongruous, highly disturbing, and all too _question-rabitting_.

Their arrival in the lab is not at all a relief from the weirdness, at that.

There is a… kind of… _miasma_ about the huge room, now. The air is heavy and even tingles a little, like the open air in the countryside before a very heavy storm. It churns with negative feelings which jumble together into something that squeezes the lungs and clogs the throat and burns the eyes.

It's quite an apt accompaniment to the weak, exhausted-sounding little-baby cries coming from the ice-cube tub.

Too apt, maybe.

Tony's heart squirms again, just as his breath hitches and his hair stands on end. He rushes to the tub, without even realising that he's doing that. But then he can only stand still before the bench that _still_ hosts the said tub, looking down at a little blue face peeking out from the snow, wet with viscous-looking tears _and much paler than before_.

`_Strange, that a less-blue face is an alarming side instead of otherwise,_` he dimly thinks, as his heart constricts mercilessly.

He flinches and shudders when a cool, cool hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes it gently. But what truly brings him out of the haze of his own jumbled thoughts and feelings is the instruction, spoken seemingly right into his mind: `_You should soothe the child, Mister Stark. Being exhausted in all aspects like this has the potential to be immensely harmful for such a small and fragile body._`

Small and fragile body. – Tioma never says anything about the _mind_. But why cry and be so despondent, if the mind belongs to an adult? Potentially an unrepentantly arrogant and destructive adult, at that?

A… nudge, for lack of a better word, pokes into his mind, and Tony flinches harder, whirling to glare up at the alien doctor standing behind him. Before he can say anything, though, the same voice sounds again, and now he's truly convinced that it's bypassed his ears _entirely_. `_Please pick up the child, Mister Stark. If you have not noticed it yet, they are already on the verge of unconsciousness as it is. Weeping themself into the state of unconsciousness will only serve to fracture their mind further._`

`_Fracture their mind __**further**__?!_` Tony shrieks, shocked and flabbergasted.

It's the alien doctor who flinches, now.

`_Tone down your voice, please! You need not shout for me to hear you well,_` they grouse, and the sensation of a throbbing headache not of his own floods into Tony's psyche.

`_It's your fault. Don't invade my mind if you don't want the consequences. This mode of communication is freakily alien to me! How come I know how to speak through this? And don't give me any info like that if–._` Tony's rant goes to a dead-stop when, guided gently but surely by the alien doctor's hand, his own hand connects with a surface that feels like a tiny, squat, shaped bottle full of ice water, complete with condensation.

And indeed, after he has blinked the shock and subsequent disorientation away from his eyes, he can see that his hand is firmly cupped on one of the baby's wet cheeks. Or rather, the side of their face, given how small their head is.)

And the baby is looking at him with large, rounded eyes, full of shock and disbelief, stunned and so, so vulnerable.

So mature. So childlike.

His heart jolts and squirms _again_, and his body gives yet another head-to-toe shiver.

The absence of the alien doctor's mental presence is only apparent when it returns; quieter and gentler than before, but succinct and implacable nonetheless. `_Pick them up, Mister Stark._`

And Tony, half in a daze, obeys.

His heart stutters in his chest before thundering extra enthusiastically, it feels, when the tiny, hardly moving, ice-water-cool, skinny, light body of the baby nestles in his arms, guided into place by a pair of hands from behind. The shape is branded on his arms and front, it feels; an unwelcome shoved-on-your-face bit of reality that nevertheless – _somehow_ – feels dreamlike.

And then he notices that, miracle of all miracles, the baby _falls silent_ and even _closes their eyes_ now that they're in physical contact with somebody else. (An uncomfortable physical contact for the both of them, Tony'd like to think, with how cold the baby is and how warm his own body is, but _still_.)

Maybe, just maybe, there's more of the baby than the adult in this body.

But if so…. `_How should I deal with a real baby?_` he whinges, growing more and more frantic by the moment.

His mind is silent from any kind of foreign response, though, despite the fact that he can _still_ feel the not-him presence pressed against it. `_Damn you. Now you're quiet when I want you to speak._`

Waking up beside a gorgeous one-night-stand in one's bedroom is normal. Waking up beside _two_ or more gorgeous one-night-stands is even preferable, though not that often. But presently, normality is thrown right clean out of the window, even harder than before.

Because, presently, Tony wakes up with a humanoid-shaped something wrapped in one arm, yes, but this one's _tiny_, even _minuscule_, the length of only his shoulder down to his wrist. And, _also_, he can somehow sense that there's somebody else in the room but _not_ in the bed with him, before JARVIS even has the chance to rattle off the AI's customary mourning spiel.

It's weird as hell, and awkward, and pretty concerning.

It's even more so when he finally opens his eyes and finds that the one nearby but not on the bed is _Tioma_, seated on a stool by the door in a vigilant pose like a damn royal or noble bedroom-servant from dusty ancient stories, while _still_ garbed in their DWB uniform.

And, after some manoeuvring, he finds that the one tucked under his armpit is _the baby_, who is no longer blue-skinned but instead a tiny _humanish_ baby: naked and apparently sexless and close-eyed and occasionally snuffling in a rather contented-looking sleep.

He gives the adult alien a glare, hoping that it conveys a demand for them to explain. Because the last thing that he remembers from before he woke up is… well, freaking out, then thrusting the baby alien to the adult one, then hitting the bar and all that it contains with all that he had, to escape the surreality of it all. He had a talk with the adult alien in-between bottles… maybe… but he doesn't remember anything about it.

Nor has he woken up with a hangover just now as evidence of his drinking binge, for that matter, come to think of it again. And his head is strangely clear for a non-post-binge morning, at that, even without the help of copious amounts of black coffee.

`_What did they do to me?_`

He asks Tioma just that, verbal-humanly, when the prat only stares calmly back at him for the longest time, seemingly indifferent to anything and everything. (`_What a little shit._`)

And, "Only what you permitted me to do, Mister Stark," the adult alien says.

The rare languid morning relaxation that the hapless billionaire, philanthropist, genius inventor experienced until just a moment ago vanishes, just so, and jolts of adrenaline flood in to fill the sudden vacancy. His breathing speeds up, and his heart rate picks up in kind.

The baby alien lets out a tiny, mewling noise and stirs a little, as if in response.

Tony ignores it. He leaves the bed altogether, in fact, and stalks towards the adult alien in… well, bare everything, but who cares, right now?

"Have you," he grinds out, pointing an accusing finger at the all-too-damn-calm caricature of a human doctor, _who is still seated primly on the stool by the door_, "ever _thought_, let alone _realised_, that the word of _anybody_ under the influence can't ever be made into _evidence_ or _consent_?!"

Those glowing, eerie grey-green eyes regard him silently, _impassively_, but their owner only speaks when Tony is, really, really, really about to haul a fist at their guts.

"Please look down, Mister Stark, and see for yourself what your _informed consent_ brought you."

And Tony does look down his front, despite his better judgement.

And there, he finds the _lack_ of a bluely glowing arc reactor dominating his chest. Only smooth, unbroken skin, as if Afghanistan had never happened. And the skin itself is in fact shades paler than his usual nice tan.

He really hauls at the alien mascarading as human, then. "_Fuck_ you."

And the fist lands with a crunch _into_ the wall, instead of on the belly of a very, very, very deserving alien.

Worse yet, the other alien chooses the same moment to erupt in hiccuppy cries _yet again_.

And, now somehow standing at the bedside nearest the baby, the damn fucking _thief_ calls out _still in a calm tone_, "Please control your emotions, Mister Stark. The child is upset by your anger."

`_Maybe I… shouldn't ask…,_` tony thinks, while trying to swallow back bile and fight the heavy darkness impinging on his sight and mind, as JARVIS plays the footage of his purportedly agreed-upon chest operation, which may have had super-soldier-like sideeffect on his body; _on his lab's biggest screen_, as he has asked.

He wanted the details. Now he gets it. In high-quality, well-angled recording. On a huge, high-resolutioned screen. And he can't prevent himself from swooning like a ninny for much longer.

Apparently, seeing such _open chest wound_ and looking at _someone working at it_ is fine and dandy when it's happening on another person, preferably a stranger, or on a film. Not on oneself. _Definitely_ not on oneself.

`_Is this kind of how I would've looked when Yinsen operated on me that time? Just, the tools would've been __**much**__ more limited, wouldn't it? And much less clean? And the battery…. That pail of water they shoved my face into __**with the active battery on my chest**__…._`

Wrong thought. Wrong memory.

Tony loses the fight against his traitorous stomach, and also against the invading darkness.

Worse, after the first loss and before the second, he can feel someone propping him up from the floor and against themself, wiping his face with a wet something gently. Like Pepper, but not Pepper.

Not Pepper. Stranger. Alien.

Alien, because nobody wants nothing from Anthony Edward Stark, genius and powerful billionaire, except maybe old-man Jarvis, forever ago. And Pepper. And Happy. And maybe Rhodey, before the Air Force spirited him away after the shut-down of SI's weapons division.

What does this one want, then? Why didn't they state or hint at it before?

Pepper, who is somehow clad in thick garments that Tony's pretty sure are supposed for _late autumn_ or _mild winter_ instead of the heights of _summer_, is standing at the door of Tony's bedroom when he regains both his consciousness and composure – or at least _some_ of his usual composure. He's still bare from head to foot, but _only_ remembers it when she squeaks and exasperatedly covers her eyes with a hand.

"What?" he grumbles defensively. "You act like you haven't ever seen anything like it before. What did we have _together_, then? A kiddy BFF thing? N'What are you wearing _winter clothes_ for? Isn't that cold in here for you, is it?" But he does wrap himself in one of the sheets like wearing a cloak. And, padding towards her after tossing a look at _the thief_ seated primly in the bedside chair and the baby – still in humanoid form – lying awake in the bed close by, he rambles on, "Why you here? Not that I don't appreciate the company, but I thought you've got enough with everything, and–."

"Tony."

The addressee stops short, just out of reach of the suddenly wide-eyed, pallid-faced Pepper. "Huh?"

And the dam bursts forth. "Where's your _arc reactor_? Why aren't you _wearing it_? You said an operation to remove the shrapnel would be too risky! And you're undergoing an _operation_, _here_, with limited tools and everything, without telling _anybody_?! And how did everything suddenly become all smoothed over? When did you undergo the operation, actually?"

"Oh." He slumps, relieved that nothing _else_ seems to be wrong. Shooting the alien doctor a vindictive glare over his shoulder, he says, "Blame them. I don't remember if I ever consented to it, but I'm sure I never asked it myself."

He skedaddles to his lab with a no-less-vindictive grin when Pepper predictably stalks into the room and lays into the would-be mysterious, smarmy prat. JARVIS tries to waylay him several times, but he keeps on walking, almost with a skip in his steps. He is sure that the fretful, proper AI is only warning him that "Mr. Bruce Banner" – his _first ever_ science bro – is in his lab. Well, Brucey won't mind a lab partner that's clad in a sheet, surely, as long as awesome science is had. He is certainly not going back to his bedroom with Pepper and the two aliens in there. Hopefully Tioma, the _good_ doctor that they are, won't trash or booby-trap his bedroom – or, tech-forbid, his whole flat – in retaliation for him sicking Pepper on them. `_Serves them right, anyway! Operating on me without my __**conscious**__ consent…._`

"Sir," JARVIS tries again, for the last time, before Tony opens the lab's door. But, once more, the interjection is waved away, just as Tony jerks the said door open.

He is only paces into the cavernous working area when his mind registers what his eyes have just seen. The sheets slides down from his slack fingers, and his jaw slacks open seemingly to the floor, but he can't care less about it right now.

Because the one who's been waiting in the lab, now seated in his favourite chair at that, actually _isn't_ his science brother – Brucey, Mr. Bruce Banner, _the_ Hulk, and his saviour from a too-soon parting with the world post Battle of New York.

No. Instead, there's an uncertain-looking, anxious-looking, _alien_-looking somebody there, with apple-green eyes and long black hair, who looks kind of like Tioma and makes Tony fairly certain that they're _yet another_ "milaða" – whatever it is.

And, before he can say or do anything, not that he _can_ right now or any time soon, and in a voice that is also similarish to Tioma's but thick with anxiousness and a hotch-potch of other things, this new alien _intruder_ blurts out, "Farbauti, where is Loptr? Please do not tell me that you have lost them somewhere? Týo told me that I could come to retrieve the both of you here, and here you are, but where is Loptr?"


	4. Miscommunications and Misunderstandings

Nanny, Pappy, Mammy  
By Rey

Chapter warnings: mild sexual content, reference to sexual activity (in the second part of the chapter)

Chapter 4: The Miscommunications and Misunderstandings

Tony's first words, once he regains _some_ of his equilibrium, are far from intelligible. Only a repetition of "How," "Who," "What," and some other noises. And he only manages to uproot his bare feet from the floor after his brain is finished with the jibberish.

After it's finished, though….

"Who _the hell_ are you? Who is that Fara-something? How'd you come in here? Who is Týo? Who is That Lop-something? _Nobody_ is retrieving _anybody_ here without my permission! What did you do to my lab? Are you with SHIELD? J, why'd you let this one in?!"

He stalks towards the alien intruder, pointing a finger at the latter, then grabs the said intruder by the collar of their apple-green jacket when he is close enough.

Or try to, really.

The intruder is suddenly a few feet away, eeling out of his grip like… well, like an eel. "Úti!" they squawk. As if they weren't the one intruding and spouting off nonsensical things! Just days after an _alien invasion_!

`_Wait… alien invasion…._`

"J, my suit," Tony says calmly, while his eyes never leave the widened ones of the skinny giant.

But, interestingly, when the latest intact version of the Iron Man suit arrives and tries to coralle the intruder, the latter only eels away once more, now further to the side and away from the bots in their charging stations. The said intruder doesn't seem to mind it, at that, when Tony gets close and just… glares, without grabbing or pointing at anything.

No attack. No defence. No attempt to leave the lab… or even _desire_ to. No closer to ones that other people would call "_only_ robots." No wandering eyes, on Tony's nakedness or round the – very, very, very private – lab. No attempt to talk him down or away, either, past the first explosion of jibberish and the single-word protesting squawk.

And JARVIS will surely inform him if the intruder had backup. After all, the AI must have tried to warn him beforehand. He just didn't listen.

So: no spy for competitors or the damned agency with too long and stupid a name, no scout for Alien Invaders version 2.0, no nosy journalist on crack, no sensationalist fan, no wandering nosy guest, and no ambitious thief either despite the words they firstly spewed.

Back on square one, then.

Scowling, Tony repeats the currently most pressing question, because he is pretty sure that he was the only one at the door or anywhere in the hall outside at that time, and JARVIS would've told him if there's any, and he'd have much more trouble than this if he after all got an _unseen_ intruder somewhere – an intruder that even _JARVIS_, with the AI's numerous "seeing" ways, can't see . And the question is: "Who the hell is that Fara-something?"

And, as the answer, the skinny giant – skinnier than even Tioma, although this one sports a pair of ample breasts – _huffs_. As if _Tony's_ the one being difficult. And they say _nothing else_, just looking wary and tired, as if they got the right to it!

He snarls, irritated and impatient, "It hasn't been a good week for me, y'know. If you don't–."

"You are not the only one who has suffered," is the return snarl, all of a sudden, quick as lightning, the first ever show of aggression from the intruder, layered even thicker by exhaustion.

And grief, Tony has just realised. Because he has seen it in Katie's eyes… yesterday? Two days before?… well, _quite recently_, anyway, when she's talking about her dead girlfriend, and similarly in Natali's eyes when she's talking about her new, quite traumatised charges. Just… rolled into one.

`_Rolled into one. So…_` "Did your child just die?"

He gets a lightning-speed broken nose for that.

And a dizzy spell.

And a broken Iron Man suit.

And a deactivated _everything_ in the lab.

And an alien choking and gagging on their own tears pinning him by his shoulders against the wall, with his feet dangling at least two feet off the floor.

All at once. _In just a second_.

Neither of them do or say anything else for a long, long moment. Just… staring. Tony with ample shock and confusion, and the alien with a newfound, deep hatred _towards him_.

The latter is strangely upsetting.

"Sorry," the broken-nosed captive offers at last, contritely, like he rarely, rarely did before.

The alien gags and chokes and cries harder, on that. Tony's worried that they'll pass out from lack of oxygen. So he tries to explain, past the flowing blood from his nose and the broken cartilage itself, "Did' bead to say dat 'loud. Dat's your busidess. I'b sorry. Put be dowd? Jus' wadda dow who are you ad what d'ya wadda do here."

He runs to the sheet that he has accidentally discarded, once the alien drops him like the proverbial hot potato. Stemming the bleeding carefully with one corner and wiping off the escapist blood with the other parts of the sheet, he parks his bum on the rest and looks back towards the alien…

…Who is now a slumped, shaking wreck on the floor, curled up sidewise where they stood, with their face buried tightly in their arms.

"Huh." He gapes. `_Change of question, then. Unless the alien is a very, very good actor, like Miss Agent Pretender…._`

"Who dicha look for, here? Baybe I cad help?"

No response.

"Who dicha look for?" he repeats, as he reluctantly uproots his bum off the semi-comfy sheet – at least it's a barrier against the cold floor! – and moves it, wrapped in the soiled sheet, to where he was briefly held hostage.

Well, still no response.

The stumped genius frowns and scrutinises the pitiful sight now lying at his feet. Then, bending down, he pokes at the alien's bony shoulder with the hand that's not holding his sheet together.

But the alien… just… curls up tighter.

He sighs. "Oh cobe od…. I deed to get by dose fissed! Ca'd leave you here. Cobe od. Got a bed wid your dabe od it upstairs. Coffier dan de floor. Dobody will disturb you dere." And poke, poke, poke, poke his finger goes on the bony shoulder, a little hesitantly. His broken nose throbs all the while, and blood leaks out of it steadily, dripping on the alien's apple-green jacket.

Still neither seeing nor hearing any response, he parks his bum by the distraught stranger and huffs with mounting frustration. `_Well, if you don't move your butt on your own, I will move it for you!_` And, putting thought to action, he once more lets go of the sheet, but willingly this time, to slip his arms under the alien's hair-covered neck.

Well, but the alien _clings to him like a limpet_, instead of getting up under their own power or… something else, _anything_ else. Quite unlike before!

"I di'k dere's a bisudderstaddid here," he muses aloud, caught between bemusement and amusement, faced with a mouthful of thick, black hair that's quickly contaminated by his blood, and trapped in the desperate bear hug of a distraught and deceptively skinny giant. "I'b dot dat Fara-sobedid, y'dow. But I cad try to help you fi'd dem. Ca'd help you dough if you pid be up like dis."

He pats awkwardly at the head shoved under his chin for good measure.

But, in response, the limpet just… _snuggles further_ and _cries harder_.

"Huh." There's something very, very wrong in this situation, in this alien, and even in himself, Tony thinks, with how wrong he has guessed _all_ the responses thus far. He's _more_ trapped and _more_ confused, now, instead of… well, on top of things, and anywhere else but here.

And still, he's _even more_ surprised when he finds that, with his silence and stillness and constant hair patting, the alien has somehow _calmed down a little_, now just shaking and crying silently. `_Of all things! They're like a baby!_`

A baby….

`_That Lop-something – were they searching for a baby – __**that**__ baby?_`

"Were you searchid for a baby?"

The skinny giant stiffens in his arms. Tony chooses to interpret the reaction as a "Yes."

"Got a baby upstairs. Wadda see 'em?"

The stranger stiffens further, then relaxes with a shudder. `_Please do not jest about it, Úti,_` they beg, mind to mind.

Tony huffs. "I'b not kiddid. Dere's a baby upstairs. Duddo who, but s'a baby."

`_So… what you told me before…?_`

"Huh?"

`_The child…. Loptr is still alive?_`

"Told you. Duddo who. D's'a baby. Blue skid. Red eyes. Den white skid. Greed eyes. Dey're defiditely alive, last tibe I checked."

He got shoved against the wall _again_ for his kindness, and gains a throbbing ache on the back of his head in addition to his broken nose and aching shoulders.

"Hey!"

But the stranger is already gone, with anger, shame and, strangely, bitter exasperation lingering behind like the fumes of a speeding car.

And, outside, the hapless, helpless inventor finds _a trail of wreckage_, composed of _broken Iron Man suits_, though _thankfully_ not any of his bots.

He squawks, _again_.

`_Just my luck. Dealing with __**three**__ crazy aliens in the span of __**three**__ days. What a neat thing._`

"J?"

And, "Yes, Sir," comes the crisp, ready answer. But the AI sounds… guilty? Angry? Ashamed? _Unnerved_? Why? JARVIS was _never_ like that even after Director Wannabe Pirate hacked him!

Although, if he recalls things correctly, this poor baby _did_ sound similar after Obi disabled him to steal Tony's arc reactor….

This was _not_ a life-or-death situation, though. Calling forth the army of Iron Man suits wasn't actually necessary.

But JARVIS wouldn't have known that, would he? With every sensor of his in the lab thoroughly wrecked like that? All of a sudden, to boot? After that outburst from the confused alien?

"I'b all right, J. D'o worries. Dere's just… a sball bisudderstaddid."

"A _small_ misunderstanding which resulted in the broken nose, head trauma and bruises on the body of the owner of the house, Sir? Let alone the damages done to the house itself?"

`_Damn. He learnt sarcasm from a pro._`

Tony answers his baby only with a huff, at first, while picking his way to the bank of lifts.

And then the word "_damages_" registers in his mind.

"J… whit odder parts did dey wreck, beside dis floor?"

"_Vindictive_" is the only word that can describe JARVIS' tone more or less well, as the AI replies promptly with, "The doors to and from the emergency stairs from this floor up to the penthouse, the door to your bedroom, and the wall beside that door, Sir."

"Oh. Damn. Dey're _pissed_," Tony mutters. "Well, me, _too_."

He orders JARVIS to empty the tower out of other living beings, to be safe.

Because the alien will _pay_, and Tony Stark always delivers.

**O-O-O-O**

Tioma the alien doctor acts like a damned _door warden_ from forever ago, which Tony knows only because he played some medieval role-play videogame once with how bored he was. They stand in a kind of soldierly parade rest right on the middle of the wrecked door to his bedroom, with their back to the room, and greet Tony with a stoic, unreadable look.

He gives them his bestest you're-about-to-be-in-deep-trouble glare, and shoos them aside with a dismissive hand.

They don't budge. Their look doesn't even twitch.

"Buddy," he starts, biting off each syllable like he wants to bite off the alien's nose, or at least break it like what the alien's probable boss did to his.

Before he can continue with either word or action, though, the weird-arse doctor cuts in with, "Are you going to upset the mother and child further, Mister Stark?"

And Tony loses his admitedly terribly short patience regarding nice-and-tame socialisation, which has been frayed badly by the alien's probably _other_ boss, who is _most likely_ ensconced in _his_ bedroom.

"Dot your busidess," he retorts, as he tries to ram his way through the gap between the alien and the doorpost with his new, somehow-suped-up body.

To no avail.

"Shit," he spits. "Go 'way!" He's beginning to really, really, really regret having hired the freaky doctor right on the spot.

And the said freaky doctor complies. But _not_ because of him, _their boss_.

Because he can hear a tired, croaky voice float from inside, from the general direction of his bed, murmuring something softly in an unknown language.

His guess is true, then. The new alien is _somehow_ the doctor's true boss.

And this means that his tower has been infiltrated by alien invaders _long_ before Loki tried to use it as a staging area for world domination… or world destruction… whatever.

He huffs, and swirls all too gracefully inside in his soiled sheet of a toga.

He can't even stomp anymore, to express his displeasure.

He'll have _words_ again with Tioma about that. He might even kick them out of the tower. But not now. Because _right now_ he needs to evict a mad alien from his tower, _again_. And, shock of all shocks, the mad alien _isn't_ Loki the portal-opening, mind-controlling Space Reindeer.

It's the plan, at least.

And his mind blanks out, even about that plan, when his eyes land on his bed, placed centrally in the room.

The baby is still there, yes, though he can only see their head peeking out of a bunched-up blanket. And the current mad alien is also there, like he predicted, now wrapped sidewise round the apparently nursing baby amidst a number of pillows and other bunched-up blankets. But _that one_ is naked, this time, instead of the baby, and he can't decide on what to feel about it, let alone what to say and do.

Tony Stark – genius, billionaire, playboy – isn't unaccustomed to looking at a naked girl or even a naked boy ensconced in his bed, or even more than one of them. He never saw a naked humanoid _alien_ in his bed, though, let alone one who so recently invaded his precious lab, broke his nose alongside so much of his property, bruise his poor shoulders, and put a big, throbbing lump at the back of his head. And the said naked alien doesn't seem to be that way for sexual effects, either.

In fact, if he didn't hear them saying anything just now, he would've thought that they're presently sleeping, with them so relaxed with eyes closed like that.

`_An __**alien**__ alien. __**Powerfully and violently**__ mad. Lab invader __**and**__ wrecker. Bed occupier __**and**__ hogger._`

It makes him somewhat miss Loki's tantrums of two days plus-plus, which Earth got free of quite recently.

At least, that time, Loki didn't aim _specifically_ at him and his property.

Reindeer Games was _less_ violent, too, as unbelievable as it sounds.

But no wonder. Tony's dealing with _Loki's mum_, here, after all, if Tioma's claim just now can be believed.

Loki's _birth_ mum, maybe, even, since _this_ alien's looks and personality don't match the little that Thor mentioned about Frigga, Queen of Asgard.

`_Well, birth mom or not…._`

"You!" The incensed _real_ owner of the bed stretches out a hand over the huge expanse of sheets and comfy mattress, grabs one of the alien's ankles, and _yanks_. "Get off of by bed!"

But the alien yanks back, via the ankle and an invisible push against his back, and Tony's soon sprawled over them, sans the sheet.

"Hey!" Being naked in bed with a naked somebody else isn't foreign to him, either, but this is _different_, and he feels freaked out instead of familiar or even turned on. "Where are your clodes, eved!"

`_Moderate yourself, Úti. You are making Loé upset,_` is the response, as the alien blithely arranges him into spooning them _and keeps him there_, all with the same invisible hand… or rather, _hands_, as if he were just a blanket or a doll. `_Why would I bother being clothed, anyway, if you are not, yourself? And why have you not healed yourself yet?_`

`_Heal my–. You're __**crazy**__, you know that? How __**can**__ I?_`

`_Maybe you should look on yourself on a good, flat mirror, some time?_`

`_I – __**gah**__! I'm talking about __**you**__! What's the relation between me and you being naked, anyway?_`

A feeling of exasperation and palpable disbelief are the captor's only answer, until Tony focuses his will on the presence invading his mind to give it a poke, however clumsy.

He gets a satisfying `_Ow!_` for the effort, which is apparently more like a punch than a poke. Then, after a wordier complaint about the hit, he _at last_ gets the answer, namely, `_You are the owner of this nest, so I am following your lead, am I not? You are my spouse, too. You should have been more concerned about dressing Loé in something. An infant this small is not as tolerant about low temperatures in a warm-weather form as in their natural form. You have not fed them, either. If this is how you behave, I am inclined not to leave them alone with you for any stretch of time!_`

`_Your…. I'm not–!_`

Tony tries to yank his limbs away from the mad, mad, mad alien. They're stuck pretty well, though, and he succeeds only in jostling the alien a little.

He receives a reciprocal hard mental poke, for that.

`_Be still, Úti. Loé was about to nurse again when you jostled me,_` his captor grumbles, irritated, before he can say anything.

`_I told you, you know,_` he grits his teeth, sending them the bestest impression of his own feeling of irritation. `_I'm __**not**__ Fara or Ooty or whoever the hell is that. You got the wrong address!_`

But the mad, mad, mad alien doesn't deign him a reply, this time, not even in gesture or sounds.

And Tony Stark gets incensed – _more incensed_, in this case – when his demands are not met, including replies to whatever he's saying when he wants those, pronto.

But, _again_, before he can act on it in any way, shape or form, the alien beats him to it.

This time, by flooding him with their incorporeal escence, without a by-your-leave, let alone his say-so.

And he can't complain, much, because it leaves him good and fresh as new.

Not to mention figuratively hot and bothered.

`_Not before Loé is finished nursing,_` the alien tacks on, as a… warning?… once he's finished reeling from the first wave of sensations.

`_Huh?_` he mumbles. Then, `_Oh!_` He stares wide-eyed at the back of the alien's head, flabbergasted and reaffirming the utter madness of the said alien. `_You… __**deliberately**__ wanted to incite me, huh?_`

`_Was it not your aim, by not healing yourself?_` is the answer, accompanied by the amalgamation of confusion, exasperation, amusement and knowingness. `_You have not changed much, have you?_`

`_What – hey! – I'm not – not this again!_` he sputters. He's never flustered regarding topics of sexual nature, usually, not even when he's a wee thirteen-year-old virgin among the many MIT college students, but this… is… just… _too_. _Bizarre_!

And still, somehow, despite the surreality and utter nonsense of it, his body's reaction doesn't fade away.

It gets _stronger_, in fact, as the alien manoeuvres his arms to slip under their head and hug them tight across the belly, respectively.

And, somewhere deep amidst his most basic instincts, he feels _comfortable_. _Right_, even. As if this were a habbit in a distant past that he's taking up again.

`_Great. Defeated by my own body and animal instincts.`_

`_Your body and memory, rather,_` is the alien's _unwelcome_ input… which shows that not even his thoughts are private, now.

`_Out!_` he grumps. And, blessedly, the alien complies, _this time_.

Unfortunately, the lack of the distraction just heightens his utter confusion _as well as_ his awareness of _everything_ and, in turn, the sensations that all his senses evoke.

And the alien is clearly _amused_ by it, judging from the soft, physically audible, body-trembling chuckles that they let out.

Which only irks and stokes up his desire even more.

"You planned this," he grits out.

"No," they smile. "You wished to enjoy the sensations undisturbed, I know. I do not understand why you seem bothered by your own reaction, but it is still amusing."

Tony gapes. `_How did they come to __**that**__ conclusion?!_`

He opens his mouth, about to explain, about to demand an explanation, or both, he doesn't know which, but then closes it again.

There's no guarantee that there won't be _even more_ misunderstandings or miscommunications ahead, if he goes with it.

And then the alien carefully sets the baby aside and turns round to kiss him deeply on the lips, and his mind shuts down as instincts take over.

The last thing that passes through his mind before it fully succumbs is that he's glad he broke up with Pepper last year, as she couldn't cope with his post-Afghanistan vengeful rampages and PTSD-induced drinking binges. He won't feel guilty, this way, and he can just… _feel_. After all, he's still just a man. Alien or not, mad or not, confusing or not, the alien is still an adult and apparently quite willing, and Tony Stark is determined to have a good time after what he's experienced these few days.


End file.
